Hello, Everyone!

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

I'm officially one-third done with the trimester! I have to say
that I'm pretty excited for the weather to start turning around and
for the upcoming break. Premature? Maybe. But here's a list of
things I have to look forward to (and keep me motivated to work
hard this tri):

Easter is the Sunday after finals and it will mark the first
time since high school that I will get to go home and celebrate it
with my family! Can you say Easter egg hunt with my little
cousins?

My 23rd BDAY! It's during break and I'm super excited to go home
and go into Boston to see all my high school buds that I never get
to see!

Going to James Madison to watch two of my best friends graduate,
which I'm super pumped for! It's been almost a year since I've seen
any of my college friends so that long weekend should be as epic as
our last snowstorm.

Neuro Practical

This upcoming week we have a Neuroanatomy lab practical midterm.
It's been grossly overhyped by everyone as one of the harder tests
we'll take at school because the level of thinking for a particular
question is very involved. A lab practical for you future students
is not unlike some of your undergrad science courses where they tag
a structure (with a colored pin) and ask either identify or what is
this involved in. Dr. Darby likes to raise the bar on these
questions by asking, "What is lost when there is a lesion
(tumor/hematoma/etc.) at the tagged structure."

For example's sake, she would have a colored pin in the Optic
Chiasm (where the optic nerves converge in the brain). You'd not
only have to know what the structure was but also how the visual
pathway of nerves surges through that structure so if in fact there
was a lesion you would be able to discern what loss you'd observe
in a patient. So you'd reply bitemporal hemianopia (doctor speak
for tunnel vision). So this type of studying occupied most of my
week. BIG NEURO WEEK is the inside joke among Shannon and my
classmates

CVs

This week our curriculum vitae or CV was due for our intro to
business class taught by Dr. Hodges. The class is a sugar coated
(in my opinion) version of what to expect in the field, how to
start thinking about the way you want to practice, the different
styles of practices, and the options and processes that you'll have
to undertake once you graduate. As for the CV, it is basically a
"resume on steroids" as Dr. Hodges put it and because I've reviewed
around 100 resumes with my experience with the Madison Investment
Fund, the assignment proved to be a quick and painless one. Intro
to Business is my favorite class this trimester because Dr. Hodges
is the man. It's just an hour class where he passionately shares
his experiences, answers questions, and I believe, gives us that
"light at the end of the tunnel" as far as where/how we imagine
implementing our skills in the workforce.

Random Tip of the Day: For you future students, I would
definitely recommend getting a tutor for the hard classes of each
tri. I was ALWAYS one of those kids who said, nope I will learn it
on my own and have always been somewhat stubborn in my studying
methods, however a valuable and experienced tutor that knows what
the teacher is looking for cannot be underestimated.

Rachel, who you will undoubtedly meet if you need help on this
campus, tutors something around 7 classes and her insight is
honestly worth every penny and multiplies my study effort when I
get the big picture.